31st December 2024
Favourite quote: “I’ve never really been certain of anything in my life, except for my suspicion of people who were certain of things”.
It surprised me that this wasn't published under the name Iain M. Banks, as with his other science fiction novels. It wasn't until after I finished that I found out it was published under that name in the United States.
It was nice to read something that didn't revolve around the Culture, although l'Expedience could be another name for The Culture, maybe in its nascent form? It felt like the story took quite a while to get going and it struck me that a few of the perspectives didn't seem to relate to the main story arc, when I was expecting them to converge towards the end. An enjoyable read, but I'm not sure how long it will last in my memory.
For anybody with a mistrust of Cryptocurrency this will only serve as fuel for the fire. In a single sentence the author managed to sum up what has blighted cryptocurrency ever since Bitcoin became worth more than a few dollars each; "People wanted to get rich with no effort". Cryptocurrency and blockchains have the potential to help solve a number of problems, but so far they have only been used as a way to get very wealthy extremely quickly. Hopefully we can move beyond this before the image of cryptocurrency is irreversibly tarnished and the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.
I didn't enjoy this one as much as A Gentleman in Moscow, but still a pleasant read. Strong Of Mice and Men and Kerouac vibes.
Apparently this marks the third year in a row that I've read one of A. J. Jacobs' books. This one was shorter and less satisfying than the others I've read, but still entertaining thanks to his wonderful self-deprecating sense of humour.
Dense and disjointed. A collage of moments connected by the thread of a journey. A man's descent into madness as his world and the world around him collapse.
I usually struggle to get through business books, but this was better than most. The title is a bit misleading; rather than being about companies with only a single employee, it's about rejecting the assumption that a business should grow at any cost. If I ever end up running my own business it will be a company of one.
An enjoyable evolutionary sci-fi book, but it didn't live up to my expectations. The alien perspective was well considered and comprehensive, but the best representation of a truly alien species, in my opinion, remains MorningLightMountain from the Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained books by Peter F. Hamilton. Something I particularly enjoyed was the shared struggles of both the humans and spiders to escape the shadows of their antecedents.
While I was doing jury service one of my fellow jurors was reading this. After finishing jury service I decided to pick it up and wish I'd read it before going in. It was very helpful for understanding the process as well as its problems and limitations. If you ever get selected for jury service (in the UK), read this first.
The third of the Thursday Murder Club series, I enjoyed this just as much as the first two. It probably helped that I left plenty of time after reading the second one.
I picked this up on a whim at a charity shop and I'm glad I did. Like stories about spies, I love reading about people that live on the fringes of society.
As somebody who considers themselves fairly familiar with the origin story of computers, there were a surprising number of characters in here that I had never heard of before. While many other histories of the computer cover the more corporate or technical aspects, this one tells the story of how the computer was made personal. Until the tidal-wave of the PC swept all before it (was Apple the only other player that survived?), the British computer scene was populated by its own cast of characters like Sinclair, Acorn and Amstrad. It would be interesting to read the story from this side of the Atlantic.
Sadly, it feels like we've lost much of the 'Hacker Spirit' described in the book: exploring and learning for their own sake. These days we seem to rush head-long into trying to monetise everything.
Like a fever-dream. A very similar style to The Handmaid's Tale. This is more apocalyptic, where Handmaid at least had some semblance of society.
Most of the Ben Macintyre books I've read revolve around a single character, but this one is filled with big characters. It may have focussed more on a single character, David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, if he hadn't been captured by the Germans and spent the second half of the war as a POW in Colditz Castle. I'm looking forward to reading Mr Macintyre's books about Colditz and the SAS siege on the Iranian embassy.
Usually, when a book revolves around the interaction between a futuristic, space-faring civilisation, and a medieval/pre-industrial planet or civilisation, the story is told from the perspective of the outsider (think Star Trek's prime directive). Inversions turns this on its head, with the story being told from the perspective of members of the visited society. This means the story feels less like science fiction and more like fantasy, where the visitors seem to possess supernatural abilities.
Having not watched the film, I didn't realise that the book only exists to serve as a plot device. Once you discover that, the over-blown review on the cover makes more sense; "The most incredible spy franchise since Ian Fleming - Matthew Vaughn" (the director of the film). Otherwise, the book was an entertaining, throwaway romp, ideal for reading beside the pool on a summer holiday when you want to avoid engaging your brain.
